First and last day of the month in PHP
I've been working with dates today and i've found a pretty neat snippet to show the first and the last day of the month using php
$firstDoM = date("Y-m-01"); //01 -> first day of month
$lastDoM = date("Y-m-t"); //t -> last day of month
Remove MS Word formatting using PHP regular expressions
Recently i've had a client which would only paste into the CMS text from MS Word. Normally a JS should have been in place to automatically strip the crazy tags Word adds, but on this project this was not the case. Here's hos to remove MS Word formatting using PHP regular expressions:
// it will remove all <!--[if ...]>....<![endif]--> comments
preg_replace('/<!--\[if[^\]]*]>.*?<!\[endif\]-->/i', '', $string);
or
// it will remove all <!--[if ...]>.... --> comments
preg_replace('/<!--\[if[^\]]*]>.*?-->/i', '', $string);
Zend Framework disable layout and view rendering
When using Zend Framework, sometimes you need to create a controller action which just does something, doesn't need to display anything to the user. To disable the layout and the view rendering add the following in your action:
// disable layout $this -> _helper -> layout() -> disableLayout(); // disable view rendering $this -> _helper -> viewRenderer -> setNoRender();
Zend_Auth and subdomains
I was working today on an user authentication system that redirects the users to their own sub-domain after a successful login. It should work like this: user comes to www.exmple.com, fills in his credentials and after successful login he/she should be redirected to username.example.com. All fine and dandy except the session is not persistent between sub-domains of example.com. After a bit of google and some help from eXcuvator on #zftalk, i found the solution:
Just put the following in your Bootstrap.php and everything should just work:
protected function _initSession()
{
Zend_Session::setOptions( array('cookie_domain' => '.example.com', 'use_only_cookies' => true, 'name' => 'yourSessionName'));
}
First day timestamp of week number in PHP
function mondayTimestamp($weekNumber, $year)
{
$time = strtotime($year . '0104 +' . ($weekNumber - 1) . ' weeks');
// Get the time of the first day of the week
$mondayTime = strtotime('-' . (date('w', $time) - 1) . ' days', $time);
return $mondayTime;
}
Test it as follows:
$mondayTimestamp = mondayTimestamp(46, 2010);
echo date('j F Y', $modayTimestamp);
Fix php base64_decode error
If the base64_decode() returns weird results, you might try to decode a string which is not base64 valid. The most common problem seems to be + being replaced with a space (" ") when sending the encoded string via $_POST or $_GET.
To fix that simply do a str_replace on the encoded string, then try to decode it:
$encodedMessages = str_replace(' ', '+', $encodedMessages);
echo base64_decode($encodedMessages);
Hope this will help someone, it took me several hours to figure it out.
Setting up Xdebug with Zend Server on Linux
Since our team work on different operating system, we switched for custom apache/php/mysql installs to Zend Server. Before everyone was using something different (the guys on windows were using XAMP, WAMP, on ubuntu i was using the packages in the repo and on the server we're using apache from cPanel) and applications were behaving a differently according to the default settings for all those platforms.
So we decided to install Zend Server CE as it has more or less the same settings over different platforms. I've had some bad experiences installing ZSCE on a system that already had apache installed via apt, but after a clear install of Karmic, ZF was running like a charm. The install process described in the online documentation works great.
After install is done, make sure to symlink php, pecl, pear and phpize so you can access them system wide:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh /usr/sbin/zendctl sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/pear /usr/sbin/pear sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/pecl /usr/sbin/pecl sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/php /usr/sbin/php sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/phpize /usr/sbin/phpize
At this point you should be able to run php -i in terminal and the phpinfo will be displayed.
Next step is to install xdebug via pecl by running:
sudo pecl install xdebug
If all went well you should have the xdebug library located at /usr/local/zend/lib/php_extensions/xdebug.so . If you don't have it there, then something went wrong and you should NOT continue reading. This issue must be sorted first.
Next you need to comment out the 1st line of /usr/local/zend/etc/conf.d/debugger.ini so it looks like this:
#open editor gksu gedit /usr/local/zend/etc/conf.d/debugger.ini # this is how the 1st two lines should look afterwards ; register the extension to be loaded by Zend Extension Manager ;zend_extension_manager.dir.debugger=/usr/local/zend/lib/debugger
Xdebug needs to be loaded before Zend Extension Manager, that's why you need to add the following line just on top of the /usr/local/zend/etc/ext.d/extension_manager.ini
#open the editor gksu gedit /usr/local/zend/etc/ext.d/extension_manager.ini #add this line on 1st line: zend_extension=/usr/local/zend/lib/php_extensions/xdebug.so #save the file
Restart zend server by running:
sudo /etc/init.d/zend-server restart
You can check if xdebug is working like so:
php -i |grep xdebug
The output should be something similar to this:
xdebug xdebug support => enabled xdebug.auto_trace => Off => Off xdebug.collect_includes => On => On xdebug.collect_params => 0 => 0 xdebug.collect_return => Off => Off xdebug.collect_vars => Off => Off xdebug.default_enable => On => On xdebug.dump.COOKIE => no value => no value xdebug.dump.ENV => no value => no value xdebug.dump.FILES => no value => no value xdebug.dump.GET => no value => no value xdebug.dump.POST => no value => no value xdebug.dump.REQUEST => no value => no value xdebug.dump.SERVER => no value => no value xdebug.dump.SESSION => no value => no value xdebug.dump_globals => On => On xdebug.dump_once => On => On xdebug.dump_undefined => Off => Off xdebug.extended_info => On => On xdebug.idekey => mimir => no value xdebug.manual_url => http://www.php.net => http://www.php.net xdebug.max_nesting_level => 100 => 100 xdebug.profiler_aggregate => Off => Off xdebug.profiler_append => Off => Off xdebug.profiler_enable => Off => Off xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger => Off => Off xdebug.profiler_output_dir => /tmp => /tmp xdebug.profiler_output_name => cachegrind.out.%p => cachegrind.out.%p xdebug.remote_autostart => Off => Off xdebug.remote_enable => Off => Off xdebug.remote_handler => dbgp => dbgp xdebug.remote_host => localhost => localhost xdebug.remote_log => no value => no value xdebug.remote_mode => req => req xdebug.remote_port => 9000 => 9000 xdebug.show_exception_trace => Off => Off xdebug.show_local_vars => Off => Off xdebug.show_mem_delta => Off => Off xdebug.trace_format => 0 => 0 xdebug.trace_options => 0 => 0 xdebug.trace_output_dir => /tmp => /tmp xdebug.trace_output_name => trace.%c => trace.%c xdebug.var_display_max_children => 128 => 128 xdebug.var_display_max_data => 512 => 512 xdebug.var_display_max_depth => 3 => 3
Note the xdebug support => enabled on line 2.
Hope that helps 
How to update your Twitter status using Zend Framework
After reading the NetTuts tutorial on how to update your Twitter status using CodeIgniter, I wanted to show how to update your Twitter status using Zend Framework.
For this tutorial you need to install Zend Framework and Zend_Tool first.
Step 1: setup apache vhost by creating the /etc/apache2/sites-available/twitter as follows:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin romeo.cioaba@spotonearth.com
DocumentRoot /home/mimir/Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace7/twitter
ServerName twitter.dev
ServerAlias www.twitter.dev
ErrorLog /home/mimir/Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace7/logs/twitter_error_log
CustomLog /home/mimir/Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace7/logs/twitter_access_log combined
<Directory "/home/mimir/Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace7/twitter/">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
You will need to change the DocumentRoot and Directory directives to match your configuration.
Step 2: add twitter.dev to your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 twitter.dev www.twitter.dev
Step 3: create the Zend Framework project
# i switch to my Zend Studio workspace, where apache is reading his sites from: # cd Zend/workspaces/DefaultWorkspace7/ zf create project twitter
Step 4: restart apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
At this point you should have a default Zend Framework project that you can browse at http://twitter.dev/public/. How let's change our status
Replace the content of IndexController with the following:
<?php
class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
public function init()
{
/* Initialize action controller here */
}
public function indexAction()
{
// we create the form
$updateForm = new Zend_Form();
$status = new Zend_Form_Element_Text('status');
$status->setLabel('New Twitter Status')
->setRequired(true)
->addFilter('StripTags')
->addFilter('StringTrim')
->addValidator('NotEmpty');
$submit = new Zend_Form_Element_Submit('submit');
$submit->setLabel('Update');
$updateForm->addElements(array($status, $submit));
// we send the form to the view
$this->view->updateForm = $updateForm;
// we check if there was any POST
if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()){
$formData = $this->_request->getPost();
// checking if the form data is valid (if we have a new status or not)
if ($this->view->updateForm->isValid($formData)){
// our form is valid, we can update our status
$twitterStatus = $formData['status'];
$twitter = new Zend_Service_Twitter('myusername', 'mypassword');
$response = $twitter->status->update($twitterStatus);
}
}
}
}
Also replace the view for the index action of IndexController with:
<h1>Welcome to the Twitter Update Tutorial</h1> <?php echo $this->updateForm?>
TADA! You can now check your twitter account and see that twitter status is updated every time you submit the form -:)
Install Zend Framework and Zend_Tool using PEAR on Ubuntu
I work every day with Zend Framework and the easiest way i find to install it is by using the PEAR packages offered by the betta channel ZF Campus
Here is what you have to do install Zend Framework and Zend_Tool using PEAR on Ubuntu:
sudo pear channel-discover pear.zfcampus.org sudo pear install zfcampus/zf # for some reason the installer does not correctly link the zf.php and Zend_Tool won't work # so we need to setup a symlink sudo ln -s /usr/share/php/zf.php /usr/bin/zf.php
That's it! You can now test your install:
zf show version
In my care the output was this one:
mimir@orion:~$ zf show version Zend Framework Version: 1.9.2
Eclipse plugins written in PHP?
On another Eclipse related news, i have noticed today the GSOC 2009 ideas for eclipse. Although all the ideas are interesting, what catched my view was "Write Eclipse plug-ins in PHP
" through e4.
e4 is the community effort for building the next generation of the Eclipse Platform. The project has three principle aims:
- Simplify the Eclipse programming model: This will
reduce development and maintenance costs and enable a larger developer
community to leverage the platform in their own Eclipse-based
applications.- Enable the platform for use on emerging web-based runtime technologies:
This will ensure the platform remains a compelling and viable
application framework in a rapidly changing web technology landscape,
and it will allow e4-based applications to leverage web technologies,
while remaining insulated from specific technology choices that may
quickly become obsolete.- Broaden participation in development of the platform:
This reduces the risks associated with building on a platform largely
funded from a single source. Having a large and diverse group of
commercial backers, will ensure the platform remains vibrant and viable
over the long term.Please refer to the project proposal for more information, including the initial list of committers. The e4 project summary page is here.
I'm really interested to see what comes out of that.